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__________________'First Contact' is the tale of a man who just wants to cash in on his creation so he can get wasted on an island full of naked women, but his fans keep insisting that he's a saintly visionary who has profoundly altered the world. AKA - 'I Don't Want to be a Statue: The Gene Roddenberry Story.'

Yes, it's completely ridiculous, because you can't copyright a gazelle that just looks like a normal gazelle. But if there was something unique about the way you depicted the gazelle, and if that design style was repeated throughout your works, and if another artist borrowed that specific design style repeatedly, and if that artist publicly acknowledged that he borrowed your designs, then yes, you might very well be qualified to receive a credit and compensation.

You really don't understand it. You can't copyright the gazelle, true. But photographs, paintings and drawings of it are copyrighted. You can't copyright a tree or a rock, but you can copyright a photograph, painting or drawing of it.

Ironically, that's why Dean can even try to make his case. He didn't invent the concept of floating mountains or alien birds or alien trees. His case is based on that they copied his WORK, which is his paintings and drawings OF those things.

If the court thinks the images in the film look too similar to his own images, then so be it. Then they didn't get INSPIRED by it, they COPIED it.

Again, work used for inspiration should not be needed to be compensated or credited.

__________________
A movie aiming low should not be praised for hitting that target.

Yes, it's completely ridiculous, because you can't copyright a gazelle that just looks like a normal gazelle. But if there was something unique about the way you depicted the gazelle, and if that design style was repeated throughout your works, and if another artist borrowed that specific design style repeatedly, and if that artist publicly acknowledged that he borrowed your designs, then yes, you might very well be qualified to receive a credit and compensation.

You really don't understand it.

No, you really don't understand. If you use someone's wildlife photograph, painting, or CGI model of an animal directly in a film, then you have to credit and compensate them for it.

But if the artist simply painted a gazelle, with no unique characteristics to it whatsoever to distinguish it from any other real life gazelle, and you also used a gazelle in your film with nothing distinctive about it, what basis would the artist have to sue you for infringement? How do you prove that that's based on your gazelle and not just any other gazelle taken from real life?

Ironically, that's why Dean can even try to make his case. He didn't invent the concept of floating mountains or alien birds or alien trees. His case is based on that they copied his WORK, which is his paintings and drawings OF those things.

If the court thinks the images in the film look too similar to his own images, then so be it. Then they didn't get INSPIRED by it, they COPIED it.

So your entire basis for arguing in this thread has been a stupid semantic difference between "inspired" and "copied"? This is why I get so fed up dealing with you.

Look at the comparison picture I made above. It's not just a few similarities that any two artists could have arrived at randomly. There are:

You could find some of those individual features on Earth. But taken in totality with the exotic alien-like landscapes and creatures, it becomes pretty hard to say that all of those similarities are simply coincidental.

So, call it what you will, inspired, copied, whatever. The bottom line is, it looks pretty clear to me from the circumstantial evidence of the numerous similarities that they borrowed heavily from Roger Dean's work without even acknowledging his contribution to the production design of the film. It would be like Alien and Aliens using extremely similar designs to HR Giger's biomechanical art without crediting him, when it's such an extensive and influential part of creating the world of those films.

Then, moving beyond the circumstantial evidence, you have more direct evidence in the form of Cameron saying that they got the designs from some of Roger Dean's Yes album cover art. And you have the production designers saying they borrowed from Dean as well.

__________________'First Contact' is the tale of a man who just wants to cash in on his creation so he can get wasted on an island full of naked women, but his fans keep insisting that he's a saintly visionary who has profoundly altered the world. AKA - 'I Don't Want to be a Statue: The Gene Roddenberry Story.'

^ Actually, your side-by-side comparisons make me more certain Roger has a case.

Whether or not it gets him 50 million and a massive recall of the original movie would remain to be seen.

__________________
Rimmer, on what period of history to live in-
“Well, It’d be the 19th century for me, one of Napoleon’s marshals.
The chance to march across Europe with the greatest general of all time and kill Belgians” - (White Hole).

^ Actually, your side-by-side comparisons make me more certain Roger has a case.

Whether or not it gets him 50 million and a massive recall of the original movie would remain to be seen.

Yeah, he's overreaching with that big time, but it's possibly just a bargaining ploy to arrive at a higher settlement, if indeed things get that far.

I certainly think he deserves having a credit added to any future releases of the film and to be compensated for the use of his design style, possibly through a lump sum monetary settlement and/or royalties on any future releases (the latter is less likely).

__________________'First Contact' is the tale of a man who just wants to cash in on his creation so he can get wasted on an island full of naked women, but his fans keep insisting that he's a saintly visionary who has profoundly altered the world. AKA - 'I Don't Want to be a Statue: The Gene Roddenberry Story.'

- Groups of multiple massive rock arches looping over each other
I'll give you that the rock arches look identical... but I'm really not comfortable with saying a rock shape that simple can be copyrighted.

- Weird horse-like creatures
This goes back thousands of years also...

- Groups of large stepped waterfalls
Many naturally occurring waterfalls are grouped together.

- Misty jungles
As opposed to arid, desert ones?

- Large pointy stalagmite-like mountains (non-floating)
... Which look pretty much exactly like the ones in China...

... You get the idea: most of these similarities could absolutely have been arrived at naturally with a prompt to design a "spacey, lush alien jungle with flying mountains and vaguely insect-like dragons."

Avatar was indeed inspired by Dean's work, which was itself deeply, deeply generic. If Dean had drawn, say, waterfalls of orange water, under green skies with the occasional black-and-white rainbow, surrounded by jungles of cactus-looking plants, and Avatar had ripped that off, I might be more sympathetic. Ditto if Avatar's blue dragon had had humanoid hands and legs as in Dean's drawing, instead of looking like, uh, dragons.

And I'm still waiting to hear from a neutral expert source (i.e., someone who doesn't have a history of suing Cameron himself) that Dean came up with anything significantly different from what other fantasy artists of his time or before had come up with. Just because Dean did lots of this stuff before Cameron doesn't mean he didn't rip off his peers/older pulp magazine illustrations in turn.

You know I can't help put feel I've seen scenes like the ones depicted in Avatar in plenty of other media. Moss covered bridges etc...

__________________
On the continent of wild endeavour in the mountains of solace and solitude there stood the citadel of the time lords, the oldest and most mighty race in the universe looking down on the galaxies below sworn never to interfere only to watch.

That you're incredibly disingenuous even in the face of overwhelming evidence? Yeah, it's quite apparent.

__________________'First Contact' is the tale of a man who just wants to cash in on his creation so he can get wasted on an island full of naked women, but his fans keep insisting that he's a saintly visionary who has profoundly altered the world. AKA - 'I Don't Want to be a Statue: The Gene Roddenberry Story.'

Avatar was indeed inspired by Dean's work, which was itself deeply, deeply generic.

Dean's work was anything but generic—quite the opposite, in fact—and it was immediately apparent, when the first footage from Avatar was released, that someone involved in designing the look of the film (if not several someones) had been using Dean's work as a model. There really was no mistaking it.

__________________"It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with
confidence, stands a good chance to deceive." — Mark Twain

So your entire basis for arguing in this thread has been a stupid semantic difference between "inspired" and "copied"? This is why I get so fed up dealing with you.

Yes, dude, I have been making that "stupid" distinction since my first post in this thread. But apparently you don't read well enough and instead decided to stir shit up for the heck of it. The semantic difference isn't stupid, it's very important.

And as long as you continue to call everyone's opinion you disagree with "stupid", and start to get personal with everyone you disagree with... (you don't only do this with me, you do it with almost everyone here all across the message boards), I see no point in discussing with you ever again.

But then again, it always seems to be your heart attack, not mine. Get a hobby, a punching bag or something. Or change your green name to Locutus of Angry or something.

__________________
A movie aiming low should not be praised for hitting that target.

Ellison and Dean are probably more creative and original before they have their coffee in the morning than Cameron is all damned day. (Side note: Would love to see an Ellison story illustrated by Dean)

And, beside which, Avatar was a much better movie when it was Lawrence of Arabia, Dances With Wolves, and The Last Samurai. (And probably half a dozen other movies and TV shows I can't think off off the top of my head right now with essentially the same plot-line.)

You're entitled to your opinion, but I don't think that's very fair. Cameron is obviously a very creative, intelligent, and passionate filmmaker, I just think he sometimes has a bit of an issue of borrowing concepts from other artists and writers (which is fine) without giving them the proper credit and compensation at the time the film is made (not so fine).

While Cameron can certainly have an inflated ego at times, Ellison is no slouch in that department either. I can understand being upset with a filmmaker that borrows from you and others without proper recognition, but arrogant and elitist terms like "his betters" really rub me the wrong way.

__________________'First Contact' is the tale of a man who just wants to cash in on his creation so he can get wasted on an island full of naked women, but his fans keep insisting that he's a saintly visionary who has profoundly altered the world. AKA - 'I Don't Want to be a Statue: The Gene Roddenberry Story.'

Not counting Star Wars which has a category of it's own, Cameron made my two favourite sci-fi movies - Terminator and Aliens. He may or may not be an original talent, but he has made some fantastic films.

Roger Deans artwork is well known and distinctive. There are many ideas details included in his artistic style. While many of them may not be completely unique to his work, enough of them put together in the way that he does IS a violation of his copyright.

Put it this way, all of the words may be in common usage but if you arranged them into a novel about the war hero son of a mafia boss reluctantly taking over the family business after the murder of his elder brother, you'd have a problem...

__________________
Soon oh soon the light, Pass within and soothe this endless night, And wait here for you, Our reason to be here...